Here in the U.S. and other countries with cultish, witch-burning pasts, it's Halloween. I enjoy leaning into my dark gothic spirit and applying black eyeliner while still maintaining professionalism.
In its ideal state, it's a holiday of synchronized content that appears to be chaotic and dark. Classic horror movies are the best example of this controlled madness: A Nightmare on Elm Street and Basket Case appear, on the surface, to tell relatively coherent stories, but squinting closer, you can see that everyone was only nominally holding it together on set, that the practical effects barely came together, and the fact that a movie eventually made it to theaters is more on par with a Christmas miracle than a night of slightly evil shenanigans.
Even with the proliferation of cheap, commodified non-scary costumes available with same-day delivery, on Halloween there is always the possibility I will happen upon a synchronized gothic dance.
Halloween is also an opportunity to eat lots of candy.
When I was a child, the best year was the one where we graduated from tiny plastic pumpkins to pillowcases, all the better to hold piles of treats. We'd judge our neighbors on their candy selection: the cheapskates with those nasty candy buttons printed on tickertape, the weirdos who gave out licorice (redistributed straight to parents), the old guy who gave out envelopes filled with used stamps, and the legendary champions of retro-tv-special lore who gave out whole-ass king-sized candy bars.
Personally, I liked anything with caramel, but more than that, I dug the mix: Snickers next to Sweet Tarts next to Reeses' Pieces next to Tootsie Pops. One of each, please. The immense paradox of choice in a 1990s Halloween pillowcase hinted at the overabundant consumer adulthood on the other side of the millennium, and although I had more than what I needed as a kid, the holiday was novel enough to feel uniquely indulgent. On Halloween, my parents didn't count how many pieces of candy I ate, and it was up to me to stop when I felt my stomach grumble, satiated and nearing sickness.
...and that's also a pretty good strategy for understanding content data. Yes, I know, Halloween isn't a dweeby holiday. It's for sexy vampires and spooky zombies and DIY costume darlings who listen to Love and Rockets and Nick Cave and "Werewolves of London."
But I'm going to make it dweeby because digital content measurement is very much like a sack full of too much candy. If you're going to head off to bed without a nauseated tummy at the end of the night, you have to understand how approach the variety of treats in front of you and choose the best mix for what will make you satisfied.
Choosing the right mix of metrics: A guide to using any measurement model
In last week's newsletter, I vomited up an overwhelming of information. Because The Content Technologist Measurement Model is designed to be industry-agnostic, it's multifaceted and complex. It's a framework, but to make it effective, content teams have to evaluate the specific combination of metrics that best describes what they're trying to achieve.
For each content product or service, I recommend starting out tracking one metric in each phase over a defined period. Start out by breaking these out by channel.
For example, a brand-building content strategy for a SaaS company might include
- A website with both pre-purchase and customer service content
- An email newsletter with occasional product updates
- An active LinkedIn presence
- Press releases and media outreach
You might want to track the following metrics for three months:
Website
- Visibility: Brand impressions
- Awareness: New sessions on pre-purchase content
- Engagement: Engagement rate
- Commitment: Free email newsletter subscriptions
- Retention: Sessions on customer service content (not included in the original model, but sessions on help section content are generally a great way to measure SaaS retention and usage via a website)
Email newsletter
- Visibility: Deliverability (hopefully deliverability is at 99% or above and you don't have to actively track this over time)
- Awareness: New subscribers (because they've committed from your website)
- Engagement: Total number of clicks and/or sessions from email
- Commitment: Total number of opens from new subscribers
- Retention: Total number of opens from all subscribers
- Visibility: Impressions
- Awareness: Brand follower growth rate
- Engagement: Engagment rate
- Commitment: Free email sign-ups from LinkedIn
- Retention: Churn rate from free email sign-ups
Or, if you were a growing media company or informational website and newsletter looking to improve revenue, your content program might look something like this:
- Vertical video summaries across YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels with a profile page linked in your bio
- A website where you host an paywalled archive and the most recent month of search-optimized news content free
- An email newsletter that links out to your most recent content
- Guesting on occasional podcasts
- A semimonthly low-cost event
You might want to pick the following mix of trackable sweets and treats.
Social vertical videos
- Visibility: Video views
- Awareness: Brand channel followers (and growth rate)
- Engagement: Total and comments or engagement rate
- Commitment: Event ticket purchases
- Retention: Paid subscriptions from people who arrived via social
Website
- Visibility: Non-brand impressions on news content
- Awareness: Brand name searches
- Engagement: Clickthrough rate / sessions from organic search
- Commitment: New paid subscriptions
- Retention: Paid archive upgrades and repeat ticket purchases
Email newsletter
- Visibility: Deliverability
- Awareness: New subscribers
- Engagement: Total number of clicks and/or sessions from email
- Commitment: Total number of paid subscriptions from email
- Retention: Total number of logged in/paid content sessions from subscribers who originally came in via email
Podcast guesting
- Awareness: Brand impressions and new social followers in the week after the podcast airs
Yes, it's complex, but it's not out of reach. Have working sessions with your team to determine which metrics best track your performance. You'll want to design your metrics in a dashboard or a monthly spreadsheet to track over time.
The Measurement Model presented last week is meant to be a framework to help content professionals critically think about how different metrics can be used to assess their efforts' impact on the business.
It's like getting a good mix of candy in your Halloween sack: You don't want to focus on just the Tootsie Pops (even though you received more of them) or the Milky Ways (even though they're your favorite). It's about getting the right mix of candy so you can eat your fill and feel you've had a successful Halloween haul.
The Content Technologist is a newsletter and consultancy based in Minneapolis, working with clients and collaborators around the world. The entire newsletter is written and edited by Deborah Carver, independent content strategy consultant, speaker, and educator.
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Cultural recommendations / personal social: Spotify | Instagram | Letterboxd | PI.FYI
Did you read? is the assorted content at the very bottom of the email. Cultural recommendations, off-kilter thoughts, and quotes from foundational works of media theory we first read in college—all fair game for this section.
Another favorite Halloween special was The Worst Witch (1986), a proto-Harry Potter movie about a witch boarding school that featured this Tim Curry classic. Sure, the lyrics sound like they were penned by the team behind Rebecca Black's "Friday," and the green screen animations look like they were designed by a teenager, but Mr. Curry makes the best of it, even if it's not nearly as classic as Frank-N-Furter.
And here's my Halloween playlist for all the ex-wannabe goths out there.
Have a spooky night!